Just found this, Mac and PC and really does do proper harmony taking into account the rules of voice-leading and parallels. A rare beast - Harmony Improvisator is the only other one I know and it seems moth-balled and the demo is useless. Harmony Navigator does not do voice leading and is a different thing really. So Harmony Builder is a superb way to begin a composition with proper harmonic motion.

Last edited by pinki on Tue Dec 04, 2012 4:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Yes I have it. They have a new update that adds more time signatures and a few other useful features. The update installers seem to be down currently. I agree it is unique. I've not had a formal education in harmony theory, so it's very useful for chord progressions and for arranging. Other programs may or may not always be correct, but with this program as a checker or as a tool you're going in with eyes wide open and not blind so to speak. It's not something you would use for making a finished recording, it is a tool for composition and you would then enter your results in other composition software and/or daw. The java is used for the palette of sounds, much like a gm midi module. It's really not just about classical music. Here is a quote from the manual and illustrates one of the reasons to follow the rules primarily, " The purpose is to avoid losing the individuality of the voices, as well as to reduce the somewhat "hollow" sound produced by octaves and fifths, which duplicate the 1st and 2nd overtones of the lower note. A chord containing an octave and/or fifth will sound less rich than a chord containing a third, for example. Therefore, successive chords containing adjacent octaves and/or fifths are considered an unacceptable impoverishment."
Imo, the octaves and fifths are bound to affect even the sound of a pop recording and give you fits and frustrations in the recording stage, if you have them. That's just one rule. Of course if you are expertly skilled enough and fast enough, you might not need this type of program. For people like me though it is really a godsend.

I'm rather sceptical about this. If it's just checking parallel fifths and octaves then that's no bid deal, Sibelius has been doing it for years. But what else does it do? Does it check doublings, intervals, range, the handling of dissonances and unessential notes..? If so, it would enable hundreds of students around the world to cheat in their music exams - But as I said, I doubt that it can do all that.

Although it is true that the Bach Chorale style of music has many "rules" which can be programmed into a computer, that's not all it is, it also takes a human mind to be creative and interesting within the given rules. The human also knows what rules to break and when.

If anyone would be willing to put in a simple Bach Chorale (or similar) and see how it analyses it, I would be very interested in what it says.

Jack, the best thing is to go to the website. There are various versions, I have the professional, yes they have educational versions also. There are videos describing the features and how it operates and also the manuals that have a chapter on the rule checkers and some exceptions explained etc. It's not a gimmick program, it's more of a tool. You don't just input something for analysis, in a nutshell, it's a guide that leads you through making a chord progression, harmonize a melody, by narrowing the choice and voicings of chords,using the checkers that you select, you the human still has to decide if an exception should be made or not, it just shows with various lines and colors what rules might be broken, and the manual lists conditions why and where exceptions can be made. One of the videos demonstrates how you might take a classic melody and reharmonize it.
Rule checking:

even insofar as detecting rules broken, getting to where you can do that by yourself is a process by which you are improving your mental acumen for the task, that this approach, leaning on a machine, will tend to obviate.

in music often the slower road is the richer road.

"demonstrates how you might take a classic melody and reharmonize it" what feedback does it give you about what you did? vs. what you get in a harmony class by a great teacher.

"Harmony Builder is a superb way to begin a composition with proper harmonic motion"
Frankly if one needs this in order to do that one is not really ready to do that. That whole post sounds like you're doing a commercial.

jancivil, you're well know for your opinions about harmony software, composition helpers, and so on. I really understand what you say and why, but I feel it's like someone complaining against the invention of the bike.
Of course, no software will replace a good trained ear, a clever mind and so on. In my view, harmony and composition software are just helpers. They can't make a good composer, but they can help to understand things. They can also give bad habits. In brief, they are tools, no more.